DAY 5

After school today I went with, Nicole, Tyra, Max, Sarah, and our three translators on home visits. Magali normally goes on the afternoon visits but she had to cancel. Her job is to make sure families are taking care of their disabled kids. If they aren't she will threaten them, if they don't start taking care of them they will take away one of their healthy children.
    We all crammed into one car and headed into Rivas. Our first stop was Malagra's house. She is a fourteen year old girl with cerebral palsy. Carmen Margarita is her neighbor and she tried to get the mother to do the physical therapy when she was young but the mother refused to do it over and over so Carmen Margarita had to give up and move on to other families that will do the therapy. Now that she is fourteen and hasn't done any physical therapy, it is too late. The mother now sees what happens when you don't do the therapy and wants to do it. Carmen Margarita can't help her now because if you tried to do the therapy her bones would snap.
    When we first walked up to the house, we saw three skinny pigs tied to trees and a tiny yapping dog chained. There was a tiny outdoor shed for the bathroom and a little clothesline. The house was so small. It was stone and had one chair and a hammock in the main room. There was a little bedroom with two twin beds crammed in. Malagra was sitting in the rocking chair when we came in. Her arms were bent up and her legs went sideways. Her legs and arms were indescribably thin with no muscle tone and visible bones. The mother and her healthy daughter looked bathed and clean, but Malagra was so filthy and so poorly taken care of it was sick. The mother was trying to make it seem like she cared for Malagra because she knows we can get her in trouble with Magali. She said it is hard to bathe her because she is too big? Yesterday when some went with Magali, the mom and the other daughter weren't home, but they heard Malagra crying. Today the mom claimed that she just went to the store quickly. Zach told her how wrong it was to leave Malagra home alone and that she could have left the other daughter there. Someone in that state should never be left alone like that. Zach asked the mom if she believed in God. He said, she is an angel sent from heaven and that she needs to take care of her for the rest of her life.
    We took pictures with Malagra and showed them to her, we tried to get her to smile and laugh. Before we left the mother put music on and sung to Malagra. It was so obvious how fake it was. Malagra and the other little daughter were looking at her so weirdly like she had never done that before.
    We are trying to bring Malagra to the party we are having tomorrow at Escuela Especial for the kids. She never leaves that house, and when we said "hasta manana" her face lit up.
    Julisa, a twenty three year old girl with cerebral palsy, lived in the second house. She lived in a dark room 24-7 and lied on a mattress on the floor. The house wasn't too bad, though it was small. We asked the mother if we could take her outside on the porch. She was extremely dirty though they said they gave her a bath this morning. She looked ten years old rather than twenty three. It was so hard to get even a smile out of her. We touched and talked to her but she just gave us an empty stare. When we left, they had her back in the dark room before we were all even in the car.
    It is so heartbreaking the see them treated like this. The comparison of someone with the same disability with a loving family is amazing. Hopefully we can find a way to get her to the party tomorrow as well. Any light in Malagra and Julisa's lives will make huge differences.